‘So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ Foster said, the sinking feeling in his stomach bordering on nausea. ‘Your pathologist found high levels of adrenaline in all three of my soldiers, which was all from the same batch. And that batch might be here?’ He watched as Griffiths nodded, and reached out his hand for his notebook back.
‘Could I get that back please?’ he asked Foster. ‘I need to check something else, but that’s pretty much it.’ Foster handed the notebook back to the policeman.
‘But if they were all resuscitated in the same place, then the adrenaline used would be from the same batch anyway, wouldn’t it?’ Foster asked.
‘That’s what I wanted to check,’ Griffiths replied, leafing through his pages. ‘There’s something in here about the concentration. It was the wrong one for resuscitation if I remember right.’ Foster waited as the policeman looked for the information he needed. This was all looking very grim, he thought, and he wasn’t looking forward to his next telephone call back to London. His three-star wanted an update as soon as Foster knew what was going on.
‘Here we are,’ Griffiths said. ‘Found it. The markers were linked to a batch of one in a thousand adrenaline, and the strength used in resuscitation is one in ten thousand.’ Griffiths looked at Foster. ‘Does that make sense to you?’ Foster nodded in response.
‘Yes, one in a thousand is much stronger. It’s normally diluted down and used in infusions, and even then only in intensive care units,’ Foster explained. ‘I think only one of the three casualties got as far as intensive care.’
The two men sat in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts. After a few minutes, the Brigadier broke the silence.
‘Would you like some more coffee while we’re waiting for the QM? I could certainly do with another cup.’
‘Yes please,’ Griffiths replied. ‘I wouldn’t say no.’
As Foster was on the phone to the duty officer to rustle up some more coffee, there was a brisk knock at the door.
‘Yes?’ he said, one hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. The door opened and a dishevelled looking Captain walked in and stood to attention.
‘You wanted to see me, sir,’ the Captain said.
‘Yes, QM. Sorry if I woke you up.’ Foster looked at his watch, and then at the Captain. He waited to see if the Quartermaster would say anything about the time. When he remained silent, still at attention and staring forwards, Foster sighed. ‘Come here and take this.’ He held out a piece of paper that he’d copied the shipment number onto. With a brief look at Griffiths, who was either studying his notes hard or at least doing a good impression of being busy, the Captain strode across to Foster and took the piece of paper from him. ‘I need you to find this shipment, what it is, and when it got here,’ Foster said.
‘Yes sir,’ he replied, looking at the piece of paper. ‘Can I ask why, sir?’
‘No, Captain. You may not,’ Foster said. ‘But please report back directly to me as quickly as you can. That’ll be all.’ The Captain brought himself back to attention and replied.
‘Thank you, sir.’
As the QM left the Brigadier’s office, the Duty Officer came in with two more cups of coffee which he put on the table in the office. He collected the empty cups without a word and left. Foster walked back to the chair and sat down next to Griffiths.
‘That was quick,’ Griffiths said, picking up his cup.
‘Yes, it’s a rank thing, I think,’ Foster replied with a wry smile. He picked up his cup and took a deep breath through his nose. ‘Smells fantastic,’ he said as he took a sip. ‘So, Malcolm, you said that there was a “person of interest” in all this. Can we talk about that while the QM’s doing his thing?’
Griffiths put down his cup and reached into his bag, pulling out a manila file that was filled with paper. He handed the file to Foster who put it on his lap and opened the front cover. Attached to the first page with a paperclip was a photograph of a very familiar face.
‘Oh,’ Foster said. ‘Really?’
Davies managed to level the helicopter out at about three hundred feet, torn between going high to avoid any more ground fire and staying low in case they had to make an emergency landing. He decided to stay low until they’d been able to fully assess the damage. Davies looked at the control panels, quickly assessing the readings on the various dials and instruments.
‘Okay, not sure what’s going on, but the temperatures and pressures all look good. The cyclic’s not responding how I’d like it to, but I’m going to head north and then loop round to the west to head back to Bastion.’ He paused for a second, thinking hard. ‘If we have to, we can put into FOB Price.’
‘That’d be a fucking nightmare, getting back from there,’ Taff replied.
‘Better than trying to get back from here, Taff,’ Davies barked back. He saw Taff look across at him, but didn’t have the time to apologise. He’d sort that out later. ‘We’re straight and level, so I’m not going to put out a Mayday. Everyone happy with that?’ He saw Taff nod and heard two quick clicks on the radio from Kinkers in the back.
‘PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN. Bastion Tower, this is Sandman 34, calling in PAN-PAN.’ Davies was using the emergency code for ‘we’re a bit fucked, but not dead yet’.
‘Sandman 34, this is Bastion Tower, go ahead.’
‘PAN-PAN, Sandman 34, CH47 with nine souls, forty clicks northeast. We’ve been hit with something, handling tricky but systems okay. Request Runway 19 and emergency services.’ Runway 19 was the closest possible place that they could land and still be within the boundaries of Camp Bastion.
‘Sandman 34, this is Bastion Tower. Copied, good luck and see you soon.’
Davies and Taff flew on for a couple of minutes in desperate silence. Taff was concentrating on the control panels, while Davies was just focused on keeping them straight and level. Above their heads, the twin motors were both struggling to maintain the lift required to keep the helicopter airborne. The rear engine had been hit in three different locations, and the damage to the gears which powered the rotors was extensive. As the oil leaked from the internal housing, metal started to grind on metal. Unseen by anyone, a spark flared, followed by another. And another. The final spark ignited the flammable vapour that had built up inside in the engine casing, and with a whoosh, the entire engine burst into flames.
‘Fire, aft engine!’ Taff shouted. Davies flipped the switch on the emergency fire suppression system, and above them the engine compartment filled with halon.
‘Okay, shutting down aft,’ Davies said, starting the process to close the engine down. He’d been through this manoeuvre time and time again in the simulator, but this was the first time he’d had to it for real. ‘Confirm fire suppression.’
‘Confirmed,’ Taff said. ‘Aft engine powering down,’ he continued, keeping a close eye on the myriad of dials and gauges on the control panel in front of him. Neither Davies nor Taff was particularly concerned about losing an engine. The Chinook was designed to be able to fly with only one operating, but again, this was something neither of them had done outside the simulator.
Davies felt the shift in handling as the rear engine powered down. The rear rotor continued to rotate, driven by the other engine, but it was completely different in terms of flying the thing. Flying on one engine meant that Davies wouldn’t be able to undertake much in the way of manoeuvres, but instead was limited to straight and level flight. In the environment they were operating in, this made them a sitting duck to anyone on the ground. He wouldn’t even be able to avoid an RPG if one came at them.
‘Davies?’ Kinkers’s voice came over the radio. ‘We’re losing a lot of fluid back here. I’m not getting any warning indicators on the hydraulics though.’
‘Transmission, it’s transmission fluid,’ Taff shouted. Davies looked sharply across at the control panel. He could see the transmission fluid gauge needle was to the left of where it should be — and falling fast.
‘Fuck, fuck!’ Da
vies shouted, his heart in his mouth. The transmission was the only thing that kept the rotors spinning without hitting each other. If it went completely, and the rotors desynchronised, that would be catastrophic. They would just fall from the sky.
A loud hiss above Adams's head caused all of the medics to look upwards in unison. It broke through the monotonous sound of the engines and rotor blades, and when Adams looked up, he saw puffs of mist being forced through the seams in the roof towards the back of the helicopter. He sensed, rather than felt, a change in the pitch of the engines. Was it his imagination, or had the Chinook suddenly lost speed? Adams looked across at Lizzie, who from the look on her face had felt the same thing. She looked terrified. Kinkers was getting more and more frantic over by the panel at the rear ramp. Adams could see a whole bunch of flashing warning lights, but he had no idea what they meant. The only frame of reference he had was the way that the loadie was almost punching the screen.
Adams scrabbled round to try to find the seatbelt straps that he knew were somewhere behind him. He hadn’t got a clue what was going on, but everything in his experience told him that something really fucking bad was happening. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lizzie doing exactly the same thing with her hands as she desperately tried to find her seatbelt. Across from Adams, Major Clarke was looking at him with wide eyes, his mouth hanging half-open. Adams didn’t have time to do anything to help the Major — he was far too busy trying to untangle the strap that was stuck under his backside and bring it across his lap to meet the other one.
Just as Adams freed the strap under his buttocks and slammed the buckle together, the helicopter violently tipped onto its side. Adams was pressed hard into the back of his seat and across the aisle he could see Lizzie dangling with her arms waving in the air. At least she managed to get her seatbelt done up, Adams thought bizarrely as his stomach lurched as if he was on a roller coaster. He was dimly aware of equipment and bodies flying around the cabin as the pressure on his back decreased, and he realised that the helicopter was almost on its side in the air.
Adams closed his eyes. He’d never prayed in his life — but now seemed like a good time to start.
48
Brigadier Foster looked at the photograph in the file on his lap. He looked up at Griffiths, surprised. ‘Now that is a shock. I never would have thought, well, I’m not really sure what to say.’
‘Nothing’s confirmed, of course, Foster,’ Griffiths said. ‘But he is someone that we want to talk to quite urgently.’
‘Can I ask how you got to him?’
‘Of course, although your personnel people back in Aldershot haven’t exactly been particularly helpful.’
‘In what way?’ Foster asked.
‘They won’t release a copy of his personnel file unless he’s actually been arrested. But we can’t arrest him yet as there’s not enough evidence. That’s why we need the file.’ Griffiths paused. ‘Bit of a chicken and egg situation, really.’ Foster looked at the policeman, thinking that there almost certainly wouldn’t be anything of interest to the police in the personnel file, anyway. There was an easy way to find out, though.
‘I think that I might be able to help with that,’ Foster said, getting up and walking over to his computer. After a couple of clicks of the mouse, the printer on his desk whirred into life. ‘I’d appreciate your discretion on this one, Malcolm,’ Foster said as copies of pages of a personnel file were spat out onto the desk. ‘But it might save you some time.’ Foster waited until the printer had finished and searched on his desk for a stapler.
‘Thank you, Foster,’ Griffiths said. ‘I wasn’t dropping hints there by the way.’
‘Of course you weren’t, Malcolm,’ Foster replied, knowing full well the game that was being played. ‘But as I said, I’m determined to help you with this issue.’ By tracking the shipment, and providing an unofficial copy of the personnel file, Foster figured that he was two nil up at the moment, and might need a few favours further down the line depending on how this all panned out. He stapled the pages together and handed them to Griffiths. ‘I doubt there’ll be much useful in there, to be honest, but it might save you some time.’
‘Thanks,’ Griffiths said. Foster returned to his seat and picked up the file that Griffiths had given him.
‘So, how did this chap become your person of interest, then?’ Foster asked, holding the file in the air. ‘I know it’ll all be in here, but I’d prefer your take on it.’
‘It was his psychiatrist who tipped us off,’ Griffiths replied. Foster frowned, regretting handing over the personnel file. It shouldn’t have any medical details in it, but there could be something. ‘He wasn’t a military psychiatrist though, it was a private practice,’ Griffiths continued. ‘Your man started seeing him after his father died. He didn’t want the Army to know that he was seeing one, especially considering the manner of his father’s death.’ Foster raised his eyebrows, wondering how best to put the obvious question. ‘It was suicide,’ Griffiths said, pre-empting Foster.
‘It’s all in the file,’ Griffiths continued. ‘But he left a suicide note that basically blamed the Army for ruining his life.’ He looked at his notebook, finding the correct page. ‘Sad story really, the father leaves the Army under a bit of a cloud. Allegations of bullying by other soldiers, apparently.’ Griffiths checked his notes again. ‘He comes home after years of being away and starts drinking too much. The mother decides she’s had enough and leaves a couple of months later, which just sent him into a spiral of pouring his pension down his throat until one day he just decides he’s had enough. Your man’s father got pissed one night and decided to connect a hosepipe to his car exhaust and sit in the garage until it’s all over.’
‘Who found him?’ Foster asked. Griffiths looked at the file in Foster’s hand.
‘Guess?’ he replied.
Brigadier Foster looked at the file that Griffiths was waving at him.
‘You’re going to have to wait for a while before you can speak to him, I’m afraid,’ Foster said.
‘Why’s that? He is here, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, he’s here alright,’ Foster replied. ‘But at the moment he’s in the back of a helicopter heading up to one of the Forward Operating Bases. We’ve got an ongoing incident.’ He saw the policeman frown at the news.
‘Damn,’ Griffiths said. ‘I did think about asking the Military Police here to detain him while we were on our way, but it would have made the timelines tricky for questioning.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much,’ Foster said. ‘There’s not many places that he can go, are there?’ Griffiths thought for a minute before replying.
‘I guess not,’ he said.
‘Could I just have that personnel file back for a second, Malcolm?’ Foster asked. Griffiths passed the sheaf of papers back to him, and Foster looked through them. ‘There should be something in here about the father’s suicide. That sort of thing gets flagged up pretty quickly, for obvious reasons.’ He leafed through the pages until he found the one he wanted — a summary sheet of family relationships. Foster read the page and sighed. ‘Nothing. All it says here is “estranged”. We missed it.’
Brigadier Foster sat down at his desk and started typing an e-mail to his three-star in London. The phone call would have to wait until he was alone in the office. There were a few things that he wanted to feed back home that he didn’t want the policeman to hear. He paused for a second, thinking.
‘So, what did the psychiatrist say?’ Foster asked the policeman.
‘Your chap went to see him just after the father died,’ Griffiths replied. ‘He was depressed, apparently, and having a really hard time dealing with it. He’d found the body, read the note. It was quite uncompromising in blaming the Army for everything. Even the mother leaving was the Army’s fault.’
‘Really?’ Foster said, his eyebrows raised. ‘How could that be our fault?’
‘The mother ended up living with someone else. We think that there
’d been something going on between them before the father left the Army, but we’re not one hundred per cent sure.’
‘This other person, I’m guessing that they’re one of ours, then?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Griffiths checked his notes. ‘A Lieutenant Colonel McCarthy.’ Foster shook his head, not recognising the name. ‘Also in the house were a stack of unpaid bills, financial demands, various threats from bailiffs. The father was only a couple of weeks away from being homeless when he killed himself.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Foster sighed and rubbed his eyes.
‘According to the psychiatrist, your chap was not depressed but had a long history of psychosis which he’d managed without any real problems for years. If your doctors hadn’t picked it up, he obviously hid it well.’ Griffiths explained. ‘But the father’s death tipped him over the edge, and at the last session he had with the psychiatrist he was making threats towards the Army. They were all vague threats, but there was enough in them to make the psychiatrist so concerned that he contacted us.’
‘Why would he go directly to the police though, and not us?’ Foster said. Griffiths nodded towards the police file that Foster was holding.
‘I’m afraid he did go to the Army. Twice. He heard nothing back from them and found out that your man had deployed over here, so he came to us. We had both the psychiatrist’s report and the pathologist’s findings come up at the same weekly briefing. I know the police might be a bit slow sometimes, but in this case, even the slowest copper could put that together.’
Foster resumed typing, thinking hard as he did so. This was going from bad to worse. He paused when he heard a knock at the door and barked out a reply. A second later, it opened and the QM poked his head around the door.
‘Sir, I’ve got the details on that shipment,’ the Captain said.
‘That was quick,’ Foster replied. ‘What have you got?’ The QM glanced towards Griffiths and then back at Foster as if he wasn’t sure whether he should be talking in front of him. ‘Please,’ Foster said. ‘Carry on.’
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